Backwaters of History - 2 (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Babeuf Conspiracy

The prisoners were working feverishly at their tasks on the walls of their prison. The escape had to be made that night or it would be too late. The plans for escape had been well made. The guards had been won over, tools had been smuggled to the prisoners, and their friends outside would be waiting this night with horses to carry them away to some place of safe hiding. There were only a few hours left.

If they could not escape that night they were doomed. Their trial, which had lasted for weeks, would end the next day and none of them were in doubt of the verdict. It would be death for some and, at least, transportation and imprisonment in some penal colony for the remainder. During their trial they had made little effort to defend themselves. Instead, they had used the courtroom as a forum to expound their political views and publicise their activities. Now, it was at an end and this planned escape was their only hope.

They were accused of an attempt to overthrow the government by armed force. To make their present troubles worse, their attempt had almost succeeded and the government was now taking no chances. In fact, a number of the government's political opponents had been arrested and thrown into prison with the insurrectionaries even though they knew nothing of the attempted insurrection, merely because it was a convenient opportunity to get rid of them.

The year was 1796. The revolutionary fervour that had swept France during the past few years was petering out. The wealthier section of the new French capitalist class was in the saddle and was tightening its grip on the reins. In all revolutions where the wealthy capitalists struggle against the feudal aristocracy they rely for support upon their less wealthy capitalist friends and the peasants and workers. They hide their own political objectives and pay lip service to the political and economic aspirations of their supporters. In the early stages of the struggle all these elements are united, but as soon as the feudal opponents are subdued each element strives to achieve its own separate ambitions. The capitalists join hands and use their newly won political power to wipe out any organisations that the peasants or the workers may have created. Thus they stabilise the revolution by checking any tendency to carry it to limits dangerous to themselves.

That was the position in France in 1795. A number of active revolutionaries who voiced the ideas of some of the workers had formed an organisation known as the "Equals." Francois Noel Babeuf, who later called himself Gracchus Babeuf, was the prime motivator in this organisation. During the revolutionary period he had thrown away his comfortable livelihood and reduced his family to poverty in his enthusiasm for his cause. He had published a paper called "The Tribune of the People" mainly at his own expense, and, through its columns, had not hesitated to violently attack most of the leading men of the revolution. Danton, Robespierre and Hebert had experienced the venom of his pen.

Babeuf, Germain, Darthe, Antonelle, Buonarroti, Didier, Massart and others met at the "Pantheon" on the working class quarter of Paris and became known as the Society of Pantheon. The society grew in numbers until the government became alarmed and closed the meeting place and dissolved the society.

Babeuf and his friends then set about building a secret organisation to prepare an insurrection. Their object was mainly communistic. They claimed that political freedom was useless without economic freedom and that could only be achieved by the wealth of the community, in particular the land, being held in common by all the people. They published much literature, most of it written by Babeuf. In the "Manifesto of the Equals," "Analysis of the Doctrines of Babeuf," "An Opinion on our Two Constitutions,: "Triumph of the French People against its Oppressors," "Address of the Tribune to the Army," and other broadsheets, they set out in detail their insurrectionary objectives and their plans for the future society.

In those days the idea of social evolution was little known. Social organisation was conceived to be the result of a contract between the members of society. If the existing contract was unsatisfactory it became necessary to devise a new one.

The plans for insurrection went ahead at full steam. Darthe and Germain were Babeuf's right hand men. They introduced to the secret society a certain George Grisel who was an army captain stationed at the camp at Grenelle near paris. Grisel was given the task of winning over the troops at his camp. Germain secured the allegiance of the legion of police and other military sections became attached to the insurrectionary movement.

Seventeen thousand men, all experienced fighting men, were eventually enrolled and Grisel ensured the support of the troops at Grenelle. In addition the workers of Paris were expected to rise as soon as the insurrection was under way. Men from the provinces joined and a few members of the government flirted with the movement. Supporters were attracted by the claim that the constitution instituted by the Robespierre government in 1793 and since discarded, was to be re-introduced.

All was ready. The organisation was well prepared. Officers and generals were appointed and detailed plans were prepared. Everyone waited. The leaders hesitated. Then came catastrophe. George Grisel proved to be a government agent who was passing on all the detailed information to his employers. The troops at Grenelle were not recruited to the movement and the government struck at the eleventh hour by arresting all the leaders.

A feeble attempt to get the insurrection going without the leaders was soon suppressed and afforded the government the excuse for hunting down all those suspected of revolutionary sympathies in Paris and its environs, and many executions took place.

The leaders were imprisoned at the Abbaye and Temple prisons and later taken in cages like wild beasts to the town of Vendôme where they were to be tried.

Then, with their trial almost over, came the plan for escape. The digging and scraping was finished; a breach was made in the prison walls and they were ready to make their get-away. Someone had been careless in hiding the evidence of their work on the prison walls. The authorities became suspicious and the attempt to escape was thwarted.

So, the prisoners entered the court room to face the tribunal for the last time. The court was crowded with sad sympathisers of the prisoners. Even the foreman of the jury was sentimentally affected. Fifty-six of the accused were acquitted, five were condemned to the island fortress of Pelée, and Babeuf and Darthe were condemned to death. As soon as the verdict was announced Babeuf and Darthe attempted to commit suicide by stabbing themselves with improvised daggers made in prison. They were seized and only succeeded in wounding themselves. The next day they went manfully to the guillotine and their beheaded bodies were thrown by the executioner into the sewer.

Thus ended one of the first attempts by the workers to give expression to their class interests. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, referring to Babeuf and his movement had this to say:

"The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form."

(Communist Manifesto, S.P.G.B. Edition, page 88.)

W.Waters. 

Books for students: -

"The Last Episode of the French Revolution," by Ernest Belfort Bax.

"The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels," by D. Ryazanoff.

"Ten Essays on the French Revolution," edited by T. A. Jackson.

"Blanqui," by Neil Stewart

One of us (1982)

From the April 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open Letter to Trade Unionists (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Workers,

Trade Unionists should reject the argument that a policy of voluntary wage restraint is somehow better than one that is imposed. This is like saying that a prisoner is better off if he shoots himself in his cell, than if he is shot by a firing squad. In either case the result is the same.

This also applied to wage restraint, whether it is operated by the TUC or imposed by legal enactment. The end is the same and the politicians get what they set out to achieve at the very beginning, with the added bonus that the bulk of trade unions believe they have gained some sort of victory. Surely it is time that trade unionists, particularly those who claim to be Socialists, stopped to consider exactly where they are allowing themselves to be led.

The balance of payments crisis and the difficulties of increasing exports against foreign competition, which the official excuse for the government's wage restraint policy, is regarded as something new. The truth of the matter in that trade crises, often world wide, have been a recognisable and insoluble feature of capitalism for the past hundred years and more, and will continue as long as capitalism remains. Those politicians who talk of formulating a long-term policy to "put the economy on a sound footing" are ignoring the competitive nature of capitalist society. Even of the workers of this country co-operated 100 per cent with the government's proposals for wage restraint and with all the new productive methods of the employers, it would not solve the problem. True, that in so far as it would result in a lowering of production costs it might enable more goods to be exported, but this would inevitably cause other countries to intensify their efforts to reduce their production costs lower still in order to regain their share of world trade. If they succeeded, the capitalists of this country would be faced with the same problem once again. This is the everlasting rat race of capitalism, caused by the need to find markets for wealth that is produced primarily for sale in order to realise a profit.

The problems which confront us are not caused, as some would have us believe, by the failure of trade unions to change with changing methods of production, but because society itself has not changed. In spite of all the changes that have taken place, capitalism remains basically the same; the overwhelming bulk of wealth and the means of production remain the private property of a small percentage of the population, whose sole interest in the production of wealth is to produce commodities for sale and making profit. Modern production is social in character, the wealth produced is by the common effort of the whole of society, but it is not owned in common — it remains the private property of a few. Only by bringing the ownership of the wealth produced into harmony with the mode of production, that is by changing the basis of society from private to common ownership and producing wealth for use and not for sale and profit, can the gigantic means of modern production be fully employed without causing the upheavals we are experiencing today.

Yours fraternally

J. E. Apling,

Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT).

Obituary: Jack Apling (1997)

Obituary from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack Apling was an active member of West Ham Branch from the time he joined, in December 1939, until in the fifties when, because of concerns that living in the East End might be detrimental to the health of his children, the family moved to Harlow in Essex. He remained a member of the branch (later named East London), though his attendance was necessarily restricted, and is remembered as a quiet man, who was able to express ideas in a clear and concise manner. A bookbinder by trade, his "Open Letter to Trade Unionists" appeared in the December 1967 Socialist Standard, he signed it as a member of the Society of Graphical and Allied Workers (SOGAT).

Convinced that someone had to give the socialist analysis of current events, Jack made the most of any opportunity to do just that. Over the years he wrote countless letters to local newspapers, and his son has been told by local people that they took the papers in order to read his father's letters.

Comrades in Colchester Branch, to which he transferred when in his eighties, have gained inspiration from his determination to keep Socialism on the agenda, a commitment which was not diminished by old age or terrible illness. As recently as March, when his weight was only a little over five stones, and he could hardly push a pen across a page, he was still writing to local papers. He died on 7 July after a courageous fight against cancer. We extend sincere sympathy to his family.

PD

Material World: The Price of Oil and Fracking (2015)

The Material World Column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revealing developments are going on at the moment on the world energy market. Coal has seen its price halved in the past year. The price of oil has fallen, by more than 40 percent since June, when it was $115 a barrel. It is now below $70. This comes after nearly five years of stability and some oil-producing countries want the OPEC cartel to restrict production so as to put up prices. The question being asked is why Saudi Arabia hasn’t cut back production as they have done in the past. There are, of course, a number of conspiracy theories. 

According to the Economist, curbing output to once again raise its price would benefit Iran and Russia, which Saudi Arabia does not want to happen. More likely, but not necessarily solely, the reason this is being opposed by Saudi Arabia is that it wants to keep the price low so as to discourage fracking. Saudi Arabia can tolerate lower oil prices quite easily for quite a while. It has $900 billion in reserves. Its own oil costs very little (around $5-6 per barrel) to get out of the ground. Low prices stem investment in other sources of oil, such as Canada’s tar sands or America’s shale, and this means more demand for low-cost ‘dirtier’ coal in future.

The US is producing over 3 million barrels a day more than it did several years ago. And it is fracking that is doing it. According to the Institute for Energy Research ‘Nearly every barrel of new U.S. oil production can be attributed to the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies.’

In fact, the International Energy Agency has predicted that the United States will produce more oil next year than Saudi Arabia; the US might even pass Russia, which, at ten million barrels a day, is the world’s biggest producer. The US already produces more natural gas than Russia.

Over the past four years, as the price hovered around $110 a barrel, US corporations set about extracting oil from shale formations previously considered unviable. Their manic drilling—they have completed perhaps 20,000 new wells since 2010, more than ten times Saudi Arabia’s tally—has boosted America’s oil production by a third, to nearly 9m barrels a day, just a 1m b/d short of Saudi Arabia’s output. US domestic demand has apparently plateaued so this extra production is going on to the world market.

The boss of Continental Resources, Harold Hamm (whose fortune has dropped by $11 billion since July), has said he can cope as long as the oil price is above $50. Stephen Chazen, who runs Occidental Petroleum, has said the industry is ‘not healthy’ below $70.

The pain of this competition will be borne more by those new players who wish to enter the industry as many companies in the UK seek to do. Wells that are already producing oil or gas are extraordinarily profitable, because most of the costs are sunk. But the output of shale wells declines rapidly, by 60-70 percent in their first year, so within a couple of years this oil will stop flowing. It is far less clear if the industry can profitably invest in new wells to maintain or boost production. With their revenues now dropping fast, they will find themselves overstretched. A rash of bankruptcies is likely.

Nevertheless, the global oil economy, despite the ‘green’ goals, will be around for several decades. As two green pundits note pertinently:

‘The largest companies in the energy industry have concluded that policymakers are unlikely to act quickly enough to strand their current fossil fuel assets or make it unprofitable for them to continue exploring for new reserves. The oil and gas sector, in particular, is gambling on a business-as-usual model that projects out to a roughly $14 trillion investment in new reserves by 2035. This investment would correspond to a staggering amount of wasted capital should policymakers decide that these reserves cannot be burned’ (thehill.com, 9 December).

What this shows is the impossibility of a rational energy policy under capitalism as energy use under it reflects the relative prices of the various sources (coal, oil, gas, shale oil, etc) and changes as they vary. It highlights the utopianism of those environmentalists who think that shaping the market is a solution. There are just too many variables, most of them market-driven. Prices of fossil fuels collapse, demand for them then starts to rise and the market need for alternative sources such as renewables falls. But when prices for fossil fuels rise other fossil fuel sources then become profitable. Either way there is no significant reduction in the burning of fossil fuels and so no reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

There's also a lesson for those who want to campaign against the use of fracking under capitalism. They should be careful what they wish for. They may get fracking slowed but not replaced by renewable sources as these are too costly, with a movement instead towards  . . . oil and coal.

We can concede that the present oil price war poses more questions than answers as the game is played. In the end, who knows how it will pan out? But, unlike those green economists, we never claimed that capitalism can be predictable or offer the solutions to climate change. We were never delusional enough to believe capitalism had the answers. 

ALJO

Little Children Suffer (2015)

From the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the iconic images from the early years of industrial capitalism is that of young children working in mines and cotton mills. Here we examine the history and current situation regarding child labour.

Labour by young children was at the heart of capitalism from the start. Factory production was preceded by domestic industry, whereby small-scale manufacturing took place in workers’ homes; this included the textile industries, where the earliest examples of factories arose. Working in their own homes, handloom weavers could have their children, perhaps as young as four, working alongside them. Down to the 1820s a cotton spinner working in a factory would often have his wife and children working with him, thus preserving the family group. Workers generally saw this last as a positive point, even in the unpleasant conditions of the early factories. Even after families working together in factories declined, children continued to work there. In 1851 there were 600,000 children under fifteen working in England, Wales and Scotland, including 180,000 in textile factories, 130,000 in agriculture and 38,000 in mines. Toiling in such unhealthy environments naturally led to many children suffering health problems, such as curvature of the spine, not to mention the lack of any decent education to speak of and little time or opportunity to play.

As a specific example, from 1813 George Courtauld employed girls, and some boys, aged ten upwards, as apprentices at his silk mill in Braintree. They came from London workhouses, and he paid the workhouse for each child. The children signed a contract that committed them to work at the mill till they were twenty-one. The company went on to become one of the world’s largest producers of artificial fibres.

Child labour was generally seen (by the wealthy, at least) as something entirely natural and unexceptionable, though various objections on moral grounds were made. Others saw it as socially advantageous, since idleness on the part of children was supposedly the road to criminality. There grew up a tension between the desire of some members of the capitalist class for abundant cheap unskilled labour power in factories, which children could provide, and the increasing need for workers with some basic education in terms of literacy and numeracy. Consequently the British Parliament introduced a number of Factory Acts to regulate working hours for children and women, the provision of education and various basic safety measures.

The 1802 Act limited the working hours for apprentices and required them to receive some form of instruction. More significant was the Act of 1833, which prohibited the employment of under-eighteens at night in textile factories. Children (defined as those aged nine to thirteen) could work a maximum of nine hours a day, and young persons (aged thirteen to eighteen) a maximum of twelve. Children could not work in textile mills, except in silk mills (where foreign competition was a problem). Similar regulations were gradually extended to other industries, such as to bleaching and dyeing works in 1860.

The 1870 Elementary Education Act made school attendance compulsory in England and Wales between the ages of five and thirteen, but only in areas where there was a School Board which decided to introduce this. In 1878 the ‘half-time’ system was set up: children under ten could not be employed in factories and those under thirteen were required to split their time between school and employment. 

Incidentally, Karl Marx was quite keen on a combination of work and education, mentioning that factory inspectors felt that this made each more congenial to the child than limiting them to just one. And he looked forward to ‘the education of the future, an education that will in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics … the only method of producing fully developed human beings’ (Capital, vol 1, ch 15, sec 9). Much would depend, of course, on the age of the child and the kind of labour involved.

Further restrictions on children working were introduced in the first part of the twentieth century, together with further requirements for education. The 1918 Education Act put an end to the half-time system, though not immediately. In 1935 the Conservative government produced an Education Bill that would raise the school leaving age from fourteen to fifteen; but it allowed children to leave at fourteen if they had ‘beneficial’ employment. Many poorer workers needed the wages of their fourteen-year-old children, while many employers wanted the cheap labour power involved. One MP, the Duchess of Atholl, noted in the parliamentary debate on the bill that some work in textile factories required ‘small fingers’, and that excluding fourteen-year-olds would mean ‘placing a very serious handicap on one of our most important export industries … not one of our great commercial competitors in Europe has raised the school-leaving age to 15’. The Second World War prevented implementation of the Act, and children left school at fourteen until 1947. In the early fifties there were some proposals to put the leaving age back to fourteen again, but nothing came of these. It was eventually raised to sixteen in 1972.

And what of the current situation? It might be thought that children toiling in sweatshops and so on is a thing of the past. After all, even those who want an absolute minimum of government interference in the economy will generally agree that laws prohibiting child labour are acceptable. Surely capitalism in the twenty-first century has no need to employ children? In fact, globally child labour remains widespread.

The minimum age for employment varies across countries, being as low as fourteen in some places, with eighteen as a common minimum for hazardous work. But legal requirements are often ignored in the name of profit. Though the number is declining, 168 million children are reportedly still involved in child labour (this figure is taken from the International Labour Organization (ILO) website, which contains a lot of relevant information: www.ilo.org). In an echo of early capitalism, child workers mostly take part in unpaid work for their family, rather than being in paid employment. In sub-Saharan Africa, roughly one child in four is a child labourer. Furthermore, child labour is in no way confined to the poorest countries; one estimate from 2000 was that 300,000 children were working illegally in the US, and 2.5 million globally in ‘developed countries’, though such figures have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. In addition many child workers in developing countries work in effect for multinational companies, often via subsidiaries much earlier in the supply chain.

Over half of the 168 million are in hazardous work, defined as work which ‘jeopardises the physical, mental or moral well-being of a child, either because of its nature or because of the conditions in which it is carried out’. The very worst forms include trafficking, debt bondage, compulsory recruitment to armies, prostitution, pornography and drug smuggling.

Even mining and quarrying still employ around a million children, working deep underground in tiny tunnels, pounding boulders or using toxic substances such as mercury; this is primarily in informal, small-scale, often family-based operations. An ILO report from 2007 found that girls did not take part in underground extraction work, but could be used to transport rubble and pan for precious stones or gold. In Peru some girls as young as ten could work twelve hours a day in bars that served the mining community, leaving them open to physical and sexual abuse.

The ILO runs an International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, which has the goal of ending the worst forms by 2016, but it is accepted that even this limited aim will not be met. The ILO has promulgated various conventions on child labour, and many countries have ratified these, but of course this does not imply that any significant action will be undertaken. In October 2013 the Third Global Conference on Child Labour was held in Brasilia: this produced a Declaration which noted that ‘child labour impairs the realisation of children’s rights and its eradication constitutes an important issue for development and human rights’. It speaks further of encouraging this and promoting that and strengthening something else, but it fails to recognise that child labour and its associated horrors will continue as long as global capitalism enforces widespread poverty, employers benefit from the employment of children, and the poorest workers and peasants have to resort to putting children to work in an attempt to relieve their own poverty.

Paul Bennett

'To The Advocates of Militarism'. (1916)

From the May 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Compel them to come in, for there shall be
A feast well-spread, to suit the taste of all-
Ruin and pain and untold misery;
The downward trend, the devastating fall,
From every higher impulse; robes to wear
Woven of fraud, hypocrisy and lies.
Compel them to come in that all may share
This wolfish feast of bloodstained infamies.
Not yours the chains of slavery to break;
You heed no woman's sorrows, no man's groans,
No flag of freedom in the breeze unfurled.
Your passion is destruction, you would make
A world-wide graveyard full of dead men's bones.
Whence reeks a stench that sickens all the world.

F. J. Webb.

'In Time of War'. (1916)

From the February 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

If at this time of brute force paramount,
When death itself is made the creed of men;
When love is held of small or no account,
And beauty scorned alike of voice and pen;
There yet should be, hidden amid the crowd,
Some finer spirits, shrinking and alone,
Who hear the voice of Wisdom cry aloud
Before Life's temples, stricken, overthrown;
Now should they lift above the noise and strife
Their song of hope, of confidence supreme
In love and beauty; now indeed should scan
The wide horizon of a boundless life,
Wherein the poet's song, the dreamer's dream
Shall stem the mad brutality of man.

F. J. Webb.

False Message (1988)

Film Review from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room With A View comes a film adaptation of another E.M. Forster novel — Maurice. It is a love story of two privileged young men — Maurice (James Wilby) and Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) — who embark on a love affair at a time when homosexuality was regarded as both a moral failing (or even a disease) and a criminal offence. However, the brutal effects of intolerance towards gays is, for the most part, implied rather than made explicit. Instead we see Maurice and Clive as undergraduates at Cambridge, in the luxurious surroundings of Durham's country estate and condescending to play cricket with "the peasants" on the village green.

For Maurice, the hostility towards homosexuality is not sufficient to deter him from loving Durham. But for Durham — with his title, land and status to consider — the realisation of how much he stands to lose should his affair with Maurice be discovered, leads him to opt for the respectability of marriage to a suitable bride. Maurice, hurt by his lover's rejection, is driven into the arms of Scudder (Rupert Graves), Durham's game-keeper, to seek consolation.

The film is prettily shot — plenty of soft focus bucolic country scenes — and the story poignant, if at times rather unconvincing. Scudder is something of a romantic caricature of the untutored, but emotionally honest and sensual, country lad in contrast to his refined but inhibited social superiors. Ultimately, the film is unsatisfactory, glossing over the difficulties, not only of homosexual love in a society that finds any form of sexual expression hard to cope with but also of a relationship that crosses class lines. We are left with the message that "love conquers all" which is about as naive and sentimental as Maurice and Scudder appear to be.

Janie Percy-Smith

The Same Conclusions (1995)

From the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Buckminster Fuller, engineer, architect, inventor, scientist, poet, was born a hundred years ago (he died in 1983). Among his many inventions is the geodesic dome, a structure with no theoretical limits to its size: the higher it is the greater the capacity of its foundations. Many have been built, particularly in the US. He was also distinguished by having the newly-discovered carbon molecule named after him—Buckminsterfullerene.

His name is not often included in the pantheon of social revolutionaries, which only goes to show how parochial we sometimes are in our thinking. He came to much the same conclusions about the society we live in and possible alternative arrangements as we do, but from totally different premisses. 

As an engineer he couldn't stand the inefficiency of capitalism—he called it "obnoxico". As an anthropologist he rejected the idea of "economic man", selfish, on the make, as a perversion of our natures by this crazy system:

"With complete freedom of choice, much of humanity will begin to discover that it loves to work at tasks of its own choosing—that it loves to disciple itself to demonstrate its competence to others—that it will compete with the many to demonstrate its competence to serve on one of the multitude of production teams. There would be no payment for the work. It would be like qualifying for the Olympic team to be allowed to do what you want to do. You would have to prove that you could do the job better than anyone else to get onto the production teams. Permission to serve on the world's production teams will be the greatest privilege that humanity can bestow on any individual. There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all of humanity and doing what you're doing well. It is difficult to match the gratification of not just crudely crafting a plaything for one child (which indeed can be very rewarding) but of producing exquisite somethings for a billion children. Activities of this kind are re-inspirational to a mystical degree."

As a student of thermodynamics he anchored his reasoning not in sentiment but in the facts of nature:

"About 90 per cent of all USA employment is engaged in tasks producing no life-support wealth. These non-life-supporting producing employees are spending three, four, and more gallons of gasoline daily to go to their non-wealth-producing jobs, ergo we are wasting $3 trillion of cosmic wealth per day in the US.
"We may safely assume that class one evolution is syntropic and that class two is often entropically diseased. The desire to make money is inherently entropic, for it seeks to monopolize order while leaving un-cope-with-able disorder to overwhelm others. We must remember that the majority of those convincedly committed to "making money" are motivated to do so because of their mistaken conviction that there is a fundamental (external) inadequacy of human life support on our planet."

I can't find the word syntropic in my dictionary but I think his meaning is clear if a touch poetic. Entropy yes. That describes the evolution of the universe toward randomness, the discharge of all potential, ultimate running down. Time is an arrow and not a boomerang. But life on earth, fuelled by the sun, is building structures, organisms, societies, except where frustrated by disease or disintegrating forces like capitalism.

Ken Smith

Letter: "Challenge to CND" (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

Please find enclosed cutting from Motherwell Times, which contains a challenge to debate with the CND. A further challenge to debate has been issued to all the political parties engaged in the forthcoming general election, only in more general terms, and has been published in this week's issue of Hamilton and Motherwell People, a free drop paper issued every week under the auspices of the Hamilton Advertiser. So far we await reaction.

Comrade Murphy was a founder member of the old Hamilton Branch which functioned from 1935 to 1945, during which period I was secretary and then transferred to Glasgow Branch and continued membership. Motherwell and Hamilton—three miles apart and separated on the north and south banks of the River Clyde—lie right in the heart of the industrial belt of Scotland. Motherwell has more or less boxed the political compass and, with the exception of the SDP who are too recent, have chopped and changed for every reformist party over the years, and having the dubious honour of electing the first Communist Party member (Walton Newbold) and the first Scottish Nationalist (Dr. Robert McIntyre) to sit in Parliament. Labour have held the seat in 1946. Hamilton has been consistently Labour since 1918 with one exception, when the Scottish Nationalists won a by-election, but reverted to Labour at the following general election and has remained so ever since.

The industrial belt, traditionally dependent on shipbuilding and heavy engineering, has felt some of the worst effects of the present slump, as it did in the 1930s. Hamilton is no longer a coal town, and the only colliery left in Lanarkshire (Cardowan Stepps) is due for closure. Motherwell, so dependent on the Ravenscraig Steel Compound, is almost devastated by the cuts operating under the McGregor Plan for British Steel brought on by the world crisis dominating government policy no matter what reformist party governs.

It is not my intention to bore you with a particular description of capitalism as it is the world over, but only to give cheer in the knowledge that once our party principles and policy are understood and accepted, they stick. Although we are now reduced to three in number and would seem to have been quiescent over the years, our interest in the activities of Glasgow has always been keen and only the onslaught of age (we are all well in our seventies) prevents us from attending meetings regularly.

Yours for Socialism. Tommy Jones.

ex-secretary of the old Hamilton Branch.

"Challenge to CND"

Sir, — Today in the 1980s the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is expanding its membership at a rapid rate. It makes an emotional appeal to people's understandable fears of the effects of a nuclear war.

Since it was founded in 1958, CND has seen the number of nuclear weapons in the world multiply hundreds of times over, but it has consistently refused to discuss what actually causes wars.

When people really start to escape from the fears and prejudices that plague well-intentioned bodies such as CND, it will not just be just a matter of 'ban the bomb'; it will be the end of all wars and of the economic rivalries between national ruling classes that cause them.

I challenge the CND to debate with a representative of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the question, The Case Against CND. — Yours, etc., R. Murphy, 73 Calder Grove, Motherwell.

News from nowhere (1980)

From the November 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Samuel Butler's biting satire Erewhon (an anagram of "nowhere"), published in 1872, describes the sort of society found by the narrator in a remote mythical land in the Antipodes. A curious feature of erewhonian culture was its paradoxical reversal of moral values. For example, a physical ailment such as pulmonary consumption was punished as a crime while embezzlement called for condolence—for the embezzler!

Now you might wonder why on earth such a piece of fiction, fascinating though it may be, should be mentioned in a no-nonsense political journal like the Socialist Standard. Well fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction — certainly as far as politics is concerned.

One of the more amusing cliches our politicians are prone to using is that little gem: "the Real World". Presumably it is intended to reflect upon themselves as hard-headed, realistic people grappling with complex social issues in a cool, commonsense fashion. Invoking the "Real World" in political debate is rather like invoking "God" or "Allah" in some Holy War: it has a definite propaganda value, both for self defence and to discomfort one's enemies. Thus it can serve, for example, to rationalise and excuse the politician's failure to "deliver the goods" by suggesting that the "Real World", with its rising oil prices and cheap foreign imports, is rather more refractory and unyielding than they had bargained for. On the other hand. it enables them to dismiss their opponents' views as unworkable, utopian and out of touch with that "real world" which they with their vast experience in repeated political failures and broken pledges, are so intimately acquainted with.

A few months ago, ex-MP Shirley Williams was caught in the act, exposing the machinations of her politician's mind to readers of the Guardian (May 19). She complained of the way in which the image and reality (of politicians) are constantly confused by the media—a somewhat odd complaint from a political conjuror whose profession is so vitally concerned with the creation and manipulation of images—of themselves, their opponents or their scapegoats.

Through television, they (politicians) become images—actors in some drama called politics—and the fact that they are real men and women operating in a real world is easily obscured.

Ah, that quaint little cliche again! But possibly Williams is obscuring a fact or two here herself about the nature of the "Real World"? Consider the reason she gives for her concern over the media: "Democracies die unless people have some trust in those they elect to represent them and to lead them." In her view the media tends, in certain ways, to undermine this trust.

What she is suggesting is that democracy hinges on the apparent conduct of leaders. Presumably them if a leader chose to flout the wishes of the electorate and thus undermine their trust, he or she would be able to get away with it either because public opinion would be compelled to adapt itself to undemocratic views or it counts for nothing anyway and can be safely ignored. Either way such a view implies that society is like putty, to be moulded at will by a few prominent individuals or "great men". Why, in that case, bother about the whole rigmarole of democracy, one might well ask?

This is indicative of the contempt in which politicians hold us. We count simply as voting fodder to be cynically used in the game of power politics, incapable of creative self-assertion, of democratically organising ourselves without patronising politicians seeking our "trust". They are the most ardent devotees of the "great man" theory, in their assessment of fellow leaders. In their generous claims as to the historic significance of some public figure they flatter themselves in the knowledge that they out in a similar role.

The "great man" theory, however is based, in Plekhanov's words, on an "optical illusion". Great men are themselves the products of the sort of society they live in, of given social forces that are used by them to effect social change. Whatever influence their personalities have it is exercised within these fundamental constraints. Is it really surprising then, given the basic lack of democratic control over social affairs in capitalism, that this should be reflected in the inflated, grandiose images political leaders have assumed, images whose source—society itself—they seek to play down by attributing their stature to qualities vested in their own personalities. The fact that they seek mass mass support, disposes of such pretensions as fiction but ironically it is on the strength of such fictions that they solicit support. What else could the call for a "strong leader" be?

No matter. The fantasies of politicians would be of small account except for the fact that they are shared by the working class—without whose support the politicians would not be in power—and are reflected by and through the media, which cannot be blamed for any lack of trust the public feels towards its "leaders". The leaders themselves invite the distrust and cynicism by entertaining illusions about their capacity to solve capitalism's inevitable problems. Illusions that are without foundation in the "real world".

This problem of credibility the leaders attempt to overcome by the tactic of finding some readily recognisable scapegoat for society's ills. The more credible the scapegoat, the less incredible will seem the politicians' claims to be able to legislate away those social ills in the face of their continuation, or even aggravation.

Take for example the problem of inflation, which has greatly concerned our political masters in the post-war era—particularly since the early seventies. The search for a scapegoat has inevitably focused on the working class. Typical of the sort of view expressed on the matter was Jo Grimond's contribution to a Commons debate on the cost of living: "When production hardly rises, pay increases inevitably lead to inflation. That is not the discovery of Professor Friedman but commonsense" (Guardian, 15 April).

In other words, "greedy workers" are to blame—despite the fact that between 1850 and 1892 average wages rose by 62 per cent (Study of Prices Lawton and Crowther) while prices fell by 8 per cent—in defiance of the "laws of commonsense", it would seem.

Others can be more blunt in their criticism. Recently the "Iron Lady" herself, before an assembled conference of several hundred well-heeled and rather indignant Tory women, rounded on workers putting in for high wage claims and behaving "selfishly". It is curious that a believer in the market economy's capacity to perform wonders by motivating individuals on the basis of competitive self-interest, should reproach workers for behaving accordingly. And this from someone who is forever talking about the need to give workers "greater incentives" (which on the face of it, is what a large pay rise would presumably provide)—that is, to stimulate what she and those who think like her would call "greed".

But moralising is not restricted to avowed defenders of capitalism. The saying that the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than to Marxism, probably explains its long-established tradition of viewing what it calls socialism as a sort of act of charity forever being obstructed by mean, unsympathetic financiers in the City.

The fake revolutionaries on the left are no better. In its pocket pamphlet No. 1, enigmatically entitled Do Wages Cause Inflation? the Socialist Workers' Party argues that "Wage rises don't cause inflation—the big companies raise prices to protect their profits". This time it's the greedy capitalist who is to blame. The pamphlet goes on to point out that the "bosses won't invest if their profits are too low". This is undoubtedly what Paul Foot, that ubiquitous guru of the SWP, had in mind when, on a Question Time TV program (22 May), he explained why the world's production potential was far from being used up. It was, he said, because of the greed of the wealthy. Apparently then, when production is held back for lack of profit it is due to greed but it is also greed which causes production to go ahead by ensuring profits through raising prices! Paul Foot would do well to heed Engels' remark:

Whoever declares that the capitalist mode of production, the "iron laws" of present-day bourgeois society, are inviolable and yet at the same time would like to abolish their unpleasant but necessary consequence has no other recourse but to deliver moral sermons to the capitalists, moral sermons whose emotional effects immediately evaporate under the influence of private interest and, if necessary, of competition (The Housing Question).

Society today is based upon the ownership and control of the means of living by a small minority. The rest of us, the workers, produce all the wealth and in doing so create a greater value than we receive back in the form of wages and salaries—the surplus value being appropriated by the owners of capital. Marx described succinctly the relationship between profits and wages:

They stand in inverse ration to each other. Capital's share, profit, rises in the same proportion as labour's share, wages falls, and vice versa. Profit rises to to the extent that wages fall; it falls to the extent that wages rise (Wage Labour and Capital).

In the language of the moralist, this means that the "less greedy" the workers are, the "more greedy" are the capitalists, and vice versa.

Moralists should take a look at history. How would they account for the period of deflation, 1921-31, when both prices and wages fell by roughly 30 per cent? Could it be that the impoverished British working class was mysteriously seized by an overpowering feeling of generosity towards the capitalists above and beyond the normal call of duty in generously providing profits for them? As any historian will know, that was an era of high militant activity and industrial unrest. And yet if you hold the view that the level of wage claims determines the general price level, what other conclusion is open to you?

Inflation is, in  fact, the consequence of government-authorised excess printing of inconvertible paper currency. Workers do not have access to the printing press but it suits governments to represent an inevitable consequence of their inflationary policies—high wage claims to maintain real living standards against a background of spiralling prices—as the cause of inflation.

Socialists have been called utopian. Utopia however simply means "no place" and only on this sense is socialism a utopia, for indeed it exists nowhere in the world at present. But while socialism is the practical fulfillment of the material interests ("greed", if you like) of the working class, the dream world that occupies the minds of politicians is incapable of realisation. The real world we all live in—even politicians—is one in which the interests of the buyers and sellers of labour power, are locked in fundamental and irreconcilable conflict and cannot be harmonised except in the distorted imagination.

Next time one of these pious paragons of virtue rises heavily from some overburdened banquet table to lecture the workers on why they ought to "tighten their belts" in these days of economic gloom, remember that.

Robin Cox

Editorial: No laughing matter (1988)

Editorial from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many a media career has taken root in the traditional enrichment of the national life through the satirising of its eminent persons. We are now experiencing a revival of this tradition which began some thirty years ago, as the wartime reverence for political leaders wore thin under the abrasive reality that the post-war world was as gritty as ever with coercion, fear and poverty. So the fringe theatre sprang up; and Private Eye; and just in time to make sport of Macmillan's blundering into the Profumo affair, That Was The Week That Was.  

Before Profumo the worst the satirists could do to Macmillan was to caricature him as Supermac - a combination of actor, father-figure and magician, who could conjure up an unprecedented well-being for the people. After Profumo (although that was not the only reason) he felt unable to continue as Prime Minister. It was a long time, before memories became blanketed to the extent that Macmillan could re-emerge, not as Supermac but as the frail but anguished champion of compassion for the sick, the unemployed, the striking miners.

Of course those old satires were pretty tame stuff compared to the downright Spitting Image, where a pin-striped Thatcher berates Cabinet meetings which are a cross between the Zoo and Bedlam; where Kinnock is a bumbling purveyor of resoundingly empty cliches; where Reagan is not the powerful man in the free world but a brainless narcoleptic. Now that Denis Thatcher has been so pitilessly lampooned as the boozy author of those "Dear Bill" letters, does anyone remember that he he really a rich, manipulative capitalist?

Well this is all very well. As the untiring pedlars of the deception that this murderous social system is the best human beings should hope for, those leaders deserve our contempt. But when we have had a good, contemptuous laugh at them, what then? It was recently officially admitted (as if we didn't suspect it in the first place) that when he was Prime Minister Macmillan decided to suppress the facts about the Windscale Fire in 1957. As an incident, that fire was as serious as Chernobyl; its nuclear pollution was as lethal as Three Mile island. We shall never know how many people have died, and how many more will yet die from its effects but, there is no doubt that some of them would have been saved had the facts been made known at the time. Thirty years afterwards is rather too late for them. The truth was covered up — and the people died — because Macmillan's priority was to protect the interests of the British ruling class in relation to those of their American counterparts.

More recently, it becomes daily more evident that Thatcher was bent on victory in the Falklands war at whatever cost. For one thing, the war tapped a well (which many devotees of the satirists might have assumed to have dried up by 1918) of blind jingoism among the British working class, which helped the Tories to their triumph at the polls in 1983. It was of little account, that hundreds of workers had to die, and hundreds more to suffer horribly, to achieve those victories.

What we are arguing here is that politicians may be laughed at but they must also be taken seriously, for what they are. Their role is to persuade us to keep in being a social system which is not supportable in any human terms. Capitalism deprives the majority of people of a full and happy life; what it leaves of their lives it distorts, commonly into a monster of fear and destruction. In simple terms, it kills and tortures millions of people. It can be justified only through deceit — and that is the source of satirists' raw material.

Yet all this sorry mess rests on the acquiescence, if not the enthusiastic support, of that majority — the people who suffer under capitalism. We don't have to endure this system; there are more effective ways of defending ourselves against its ravages than laughing at its spokespeople. Satire claims to add to the gaiety of our lives when in fact it is a depressingly sterile response to a desperate problem which cries out for an urgent solution. And that is in our hands. If we continue to treat capitalism as a laughing matter the joke will be on us.

'The Naked and the Dead' (1950)

Book Review from the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was not for several years after the cessation of actual hostilities that the various "classics: of the first world war, such as "Journey's End," "A Farewell to Arms" and "All Quiet on the Western Front" came before the public eye. By the time they did, the so called glory had faded from victory and the sting from defeat, and writers could view the situation far more accurately. World War Two is now bearing fruit of a similar flavour.

So far most of this work has come from Italy and America, the Italians dealing with the home conditions of defeat, and the Americans with the problems of a victorious army. It is announced that Hemingway is attempting to emulate his own post-1918 success. He has been beaten at the post by John Horne Burns with the "Gallery" (which in many ways reminds one of the Italian film "Paisa") and Norman Mailer with "The Naked and the Dead."

If some of the provincial ladies who gather at the vicar's sewing circle to make comforts for the troops and talk glibly of the glories of war, dared read this book they would be most highly offended. Yet the author purports it to be no more than a portrait of an average American brigade in action in the Pacific during the years between 1941 and 1945.

There is neither grandeur nor glory, pomp nor fulfillment. Instead there is ugliness and cruelty, pettiness and frustration.

The peculiar circumstances in which these men find themselves, in a strange climate, living for months on end in an all male society, waiting to kill or be killed, brings out in them everything that is vicious. Between the men and those dressed in the brief authority of "stripes: petty grievances are magnified into major issues; and the same antagonism exists between the N.C.O.'s and officers, to such a degree that a sergeant wittingly sends an interfering officer to his death. And even among themselves, the officers, N.C.O.'s and men are constantly seeking an excuse to release their high strung tempers. The two Jews and other minorities are the first to suffer.

Behind the lines their conversation is centred almost entirely upon sex in its crudest terms. It is reminiscent of the two soldiers who, at the opening of 'All Quiet on the Western Front," muse upon the use of silk underwear in the officers' brothels. The unnatural monastic order of their existence magnifies this function so much out of proportion that it looses all semblance of normality. Each man tries to outdo the other in the lurid tales with which they pass their time.

It is only a minor battle and they win. The Japanese are driven from the atoll and one prisoner is brutally baited and shot. Searching for souvenirs, the Americans find wallets containing photographs of wives and families in Japan, similar to those which they carry themselves.

Where is the victory? In a piece of jungle land? The dead Japanese may well have been dead Americans. As it is they must fight on, land on another island, fight another battle and continue to degenerate till the conflict ends.

That is the story. Well could it have been the story of a battle at the time of Napoleon, of the Spanish Armada, of Alexander the Great. Throughout the history of property-society wars have been accompanied by horrors beyond description. In the name of freedom, right or justice men have been fed to the Spanish Inquisition, Boers and Indians cast into British concentration camps, Jews and recalcitrants into gas chambers. Women have been raped and children slaughtered. It is impossible to train men to murder, cast them into pools of blood and expect them to retain a sense of proportion. Such conditions as these must breed the inhumanity we witness.

Neither this book nor the others mentioned point to a solution. That is not the task of the novelist. Nevertheless they are useful as pictures of what war is really like—pictures which may inspire the reader to ask himself, "Why should these things be?"

Ronald.

From Our Branches. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

EAST LONDON.

Our branch is yet in its infancy and has an enormous amount of preliminary work to do with only a small number of member to do it. The area of our propagandist field is very great and so is the spade work necessary to cultivate that field. But as our members are Socialists not merely in name but in reality, whatever we want in membership, we gain in enthusiasm. We are therefore pleased with the work and satisfied with the results. One of our main difficulties is the obtaining of branch premises: a difficulty we hope soon to dispose of. Much interest is shown by the men in East London on all our lectures, many hoping, and this hope is in no wise singular, to shortly throw their time and energy into the East London branch. — I. Blaustein.

EDMONTON.

I hasten to give few words on the position here in hopes that though few, their publication in "The Socialist Standard" may interest comrades in other parts, even if conferring an honour upon sleepy Edmonton.

In future issues of our paper I may be given an opportunity of tracing from their earlier stages the growth of the reform parties, etc., already existing here, and of showing from an analysis of their political manifestations the chief reason of the apathy of the many and the despair of others when forced to contemplate the Social Problem, but meantime it will be sufficient to say that those causes and their results combined simply rendered more imperative than ever the formation of a Socialist organisation in this district—that, therefore, in obedience to the law of necessity, as as the advertiser would put it, "to fill a longfelt want," The Edmonton Branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was constituted. Since that moment success has been ours. Our propaganda meetings—of which we hold two every Sunday—have proved very encouraging indeed, fully justifying our appearance. The absolutely unsolicited testimonials given us in the shape of planned attacks upon our meetings by a few persons calling themselves Social-Democrats, have done much to clear the political atmosphere and to show the workers of Edmonton exactly who's who. Needless to say those attacks (some of them dirtier even than the weather we have lately experienced) were by a courtesy and tolerance on the part of our speakers somewhat disconcerting to those men who yet seem ignorant of the power of truth, and who through failing to understand that Socialists can be gentlemen, affect at times the disposition of the hooligan or the bully.

However, be that as it may, those attacks will soon cease. Even a bully knows when he is thoroughly beaten, and as we are not children to be frightened away, but men and women strong in the rectitude of our principles and organised in a party that understands them, being ready at all times, as during the past two months, to give a good account of ourselves—to repel effectually all attempts tp check our progress, no matter under what guise the pseudo-reform-quack politicians choose to appear—we look with assurance to the future. After two months' work we are numerically and financially stronger, richer in enthusiasm, and as firm in our determination to win as we are confident of victory.

For assistance in the past and anticipating a continuance of it in the future, we desire to place on record our appreciation of and indebtedness to, our speakers and the party generally, while to help in organising for the grand, the final fight the workers of Edmonton will gladly welcome our new ally, "The Socialist Standard."

All hail "The Socialist Standard"!

Speed the Social Revolution.—A. Anderson.

FULHAM.
This branch was formed in mid-July and is already carrying on a vigorous and well-conducted propaganda. Our open-air meetings are held at 11.30 a.m. on Sundays at the corner of Waterford Road and King's Road. In Fulham there is a large number of workers who are beginning to understand that nothing short of the Social Revolution will benefit them. Thus there is a good prospect for the success of our branch of the Socialist Party, and it is with the most optimistic of views that the comrades here rally round the flag of The Socialist Party with the determination of helping to build up a sound organisation to free the workers from the enslavement of capitalism.

— E. J. B. Allen. Sec.

ISLINGTON.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain having been inaugurated on the 12th of June, 1904, its Islington branch was formed two days later, on the 14th. Its members commenced their outdoor propaganda with a mass meeting in Finsbury Park on the 19th June, which turned out a success, the audience at one time reaching 2,000. We are carrying on meetings on Sunday mornings and evenings in Finsbury Park. We have also started week night meetings on Wednesday at Highbury Corner, where we meet with an appreciative hearing from an intelligent audience. Our membership is steadily growing, having now reached 20, and this number will be soon augmented as we intend getting in touch with several unattached Socialists who are in agreement with our principles.

—W. L. Auger, Branch Correspondent.

PADDINGTON.

The Paddington Branch was formed the week following the first meeting of the Party. From that time we have made splendid progress. We are increasing our membership, and it is rare for a week to lass without having made new recruits for the cause of Revolutionary Socialism. Our members are giving their best effort and energy, for the purpose of making this district a stronghold of our party. Each member of our branch recognises his responsibility, and takes his place in the fighting line. Since the time we were enrolled as members of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, our propaganda meetings have been attended by increased audiences who take a keen interest in our lectures. We feel convinced now that a straight Socialist Party is formed in this locality, the members of our class will rally to our support.

The sale of good educational literature has increased, showing that insistence upon the existence of the class-struggle and the principles of Socialism clearly explained, create a desire on the part of the working-class to learn more of our movement, and the object for which we are striving. The branch has been successful in opening and extending our propaganda to Regent's Park. The meetings held have been very encouraging, members of the audience expressing their congratulations on our efforts to build up a branch of our party in that district, and we are confident that in a short space of time a new branch will be the result. The increased propaganda has the effect of calling into action all our resources, the result of which has the good effect of developing more members capable of taking the chair at our propaganda meetings, which is a good training for future speakers of the party. Our experience is that punctuality at outdoor meetings is essential to ensure a successful meeting. We find that an audience interested in our propaganda will congregate near the spot, just about the time for the meeting to commence, so that to start late causes a bad impression. The success of our outdoor meetings depends largely on the internal organisation and administration of the branch business. Therefore we strive to improve our organisation by a careful system and method, so that our members know what work they have to perform. The prospect for us looks very bright. We are the only party that can gain the attention of the working-class in this district. With an increasing membership, and a demand for literature, there is a certainty of our paper having a large circulation. It is our intention to leave no stone unturned in extending the sale of "The Socialist Standard" and to keep on forging ahead for the purpose of building up a strong, class-conscious movement in the West of London, which shall be a source of strength and vigour to The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

—T. W. Allen, Secretary.

PECKHAM.

Things are going very well with us in Peckham. Our branch meetings are well attended, our membership is increasing, our members are good workers, we have very good discussions on Friday evenings, which is a good way of training likely speakers. We are putting in good outdoor work, holding well-attended meetings in Rye Lane on Thursday evenings, as well as Sunday meetings on the Rye. So you see, we are going strong.

—W. Russell.

TOOTING.

Considering that the Tooting Branch has been in existence only five weeks, most of which time has been occupied in organising branch, we can hardly claim to have yet enlightened the workers of this district to a true understanding of their position, or to our just claim to be considered The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Nevertheless so encouraging has been our opening, so well attended have been our meetings, that the speaker at a meeting of the S.D.F. announced from the platform that so great had been the spread of Socialism in the district that the formation of another Socialist Party had been rendered necessary. Our explanation of our principles and policy are so much appreciated that every branch meeting has seen an increase to our membership. Our greatest hope is in the intelligent and appreciative audiences we have at our meetings and in the many unattached Socialist in Tooting.

—C. Goss, Sec.

WATFORD.

Since the formation of the Watford branch we have held seven out-door propaganda meetings, and in addition to these on July 31st we had a regular field day, two mass meetings being held, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, the latter with a very large and attentive audience. Our speakers are listened to with attention and interest and questions are usually asked, so much so that comrade Fitzgerald was answering questions for hour and a half on one occasion. Up to the present we have sold about 9s. worth of literature, and hope to materially increase our sales on the advent of the "Socialist Standard." We are running an economic class with comrade Fitzgerald as instructor, which is open for any due to join. Our members are all enthusiastic workers and are determined to do anything in their power to forward the cause of uncompromising Socialism, in spite of a whole host of reform and bogus labour parties.

—C. T. King, Organiser.

WEST HAM.

This branch has started with a fair membership and is pursuing an active propaganda at Dames Road, Forest Gate, one of the best places in West Ham for the purpose. Now we have shaken ourselves down and got into working order, we intend spreading ourselves out a bit and so have arranged to render assistance to other districts. Commencing with the first week in September, we will hold meetings in Devon's Road, Poplar, on Sunday mornings, to assist our East End comrades, who are having an uphill fight in that district. We will hold our own meetings as usual at 7 p.m., and on Monday evenings we shall start propagating our principles at Roden Road, Ilford, where there is every prospect of the early formation of a strong branch. We want some more good, sound literature, and trust that the E.C. of the party will see their way to furnish it at an early date.

—G. H.

(This matter of literature is receiving our most serious consideration.—Ed. Com.)

WOOD GREEN.

This branch is at present holding its branch meetings in the secretary's house. Efforts are being made to secure more suitable premises which can be made the real centre of propaganda in the district. Our members are all real live Socialists, each talking some share in the propaganda of uncompromising Socialism, with the result that our membership has considerably increased. Our meetings at Jolly Butchers' Hill prove that there is a growing interest in our principles, there being questions and discussion at most of those meetings. The branch keeps a keen eye upon local affairs, with the doings and misdoings of the Administrative councils. In Wood Green the future is full of promise for The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

—John Crump, Secretary.